With the improvement of the network technology and the video coding technology, a 3-dimension (3D) display technology with the sense of reality and stereoscopy has been applied into various communication terminals step by step, such as televisions, game machines, laptops, video players and cell phones, etc. A 3D video display terminal can be used for sending a 3D video, which improves the user experience of 3D video services.
A 3D video display terminal has two image acquisition units (cameras) acquiring two images taken from different angles, which are sent to a receiver terminal after being encoded. The receiver decodes the received images and a user enjoys the video with a stereoscopic effect. However, it brings about a large data amount when a 3D video presents in a certain format. The large data amount puts forward a challenge to each step of acquiring a video, coding, sending or displaying a 3D video. In the network technology, especially in the wireless network technology, where there are not only the lack of bandwidth resources but also the limited power of wireless terminals in a wireless sending environment, the large amount of data is sent in a narrow bandwidth, which may lead to packet loss and image distortion, such that the 3D video could not be sent effectively and reliably.
At present, a 2D video is sent with the H.263 video communication protocol in the H.324 protocol stack. Since the H.263 video communication protocol is a communication standard with which a video is sent at a low bit rate (tens of Kbps), sending a video with such communication protocol can maximize the reduction of the data amount of the video to be sent, which saves the bandwidth. Because of the large data amount of a 3D video, it is impossible to send a 3D video effectively and reliably with a bandwidth required by the existing H.263.